In addition to new and Ashton Kutcher approved Yoga Tablet 2 devices, Lenovo has also unveiled the successor to its quite popular Yoga 2 Pro notebook, the new Yoga 3 Pro notebook. Lenovo did not change much of the winning combination but has only slightly upgraded the Yoga 2 Pro notebook by making the new one thinner, lighter and giving it a bit more power with Intel's Core M Broadwell CPU.

According to Lenovo, the new Yoga 3 Pro is 12.8mm thick which makes it 17 percent thinner than the old model. It weighs 1.19kg, which makes it 15 percent lighter than the Yoga 2 Pro. It is still designed around a 13.3-inch 3200x1800 QHD+ display protected by Gorilla Glass. Lenovo also used the new "watchband" hinge, which is apparently made from over 800 individual pieces of steel and aluminum and allows the Yoga 3 Pro notebook to be used in various modes, as normal notebook, tablet mode and more.

The rest of the specifications and features of the Yoga 3 Pro notebook include Intel's new Broadwell Core M-70 CPU paired with 8GB of RAM and up to 512GB of SSD storage, although most SKUs on the market will be coming with 256GB of flash storage space. It also comes with 802.11ac WiFi and battery that should keep it running for around nine hours, according to Lenovo.

The new Yoga 3 Pro notebook will be available in three color choices, silver, orange and gold and should already be available a price starting at €1,599/US $1,349.,

MSI has unveiled yet another gaming notebook with performance that makes it more of a desktop replacement rather than your average notebook.

The MSI GT72 Dominator Pro is designed around a 17.3-inch FullHD 1920x1080 resolution anti-reflective screen and packed in a completely redesigned one-piece aluminum chassis which is less than 2 inches (5cm) thick. Based on Intel's HM87 chipset with Intel Core i7-4710HQ Haswell-based quad-core CPU with Hyper-threading clocked at 2.5GHz base and 3.4GHz Turbo Boost clocks as well as Nvidia Geforce GTX 880M GPU with 8GB of GDDR5 memory, it is quite obvious that the Dominator GT72 will definitely pack some serious performance.

The rest of the specs include two different storage options including four M.2 128GB SSDs in RAID 0 paired up with 1TB HDD or two M.2 128GB SSDs in RAID 0 with 1TB HDD, either 32GB or 24GB of DDR3L 1600MHz system memory, Blu-ray optical drive, Killer E2200 Ethernet and Killer N1525 Wireless-AC WiFi, Dynaudio speakers with sub-woofer, six USB 3.0 ports, HDMI and mini DisplayPort outputs and a 9-cell battery.

The precise dimensions are set at 42.8x29.4x4.7cm and it weighs 3.9kg. Since the GT72 Dominator Pro is a gaming notebook, MSI decided to equip it with a keyboard that is co-developed with SteelSeries and which not only offers fully customizable backlight and keys, but also a solid and tactile keyboard.

According to MSI, the new GT72 Dominator will be available in two SKUs which differ in the amount of system memory and storage options and the price for the top GT72 Dominator Pro-007 SKU with 32GB of DDR3 memory and four 128GB SSDs in RAID 0 is set at US $2,999.99 while the one with 24GB of DDR3 memory and two 128GB SSDs will set you back at US $2,599.99.

Asus has unveiled its newest Zenbook notebook during Computex 2014, the Zenbook NX500 Ultrabook. Based on the recognizable Asus Zenbook design, with a 15.6-inch 4K/UHD screen, the new Zenbook NX500 surely looks quite impressive and by the looks of it, can give just about any Apple MacBook a run for its money.

Unfortunately, Asus has only announced the new Zenbook NX500 Ultrabook, leaving out all the juicy details. As noted, the Zenbook NX500 will be based around a 15.6-inch 3840x2160 display and based on, yet to be detailed, Intel Core i7 CPU paired up with Nvidia's GTX 850M GPU with 2GB of VRAM and up to 16GB of RAM.

Asus actually managed to pack quite a hardware inside a 19mm thick and 2.2kg heavy 15.6-inch notebook chassis. The Asus Zenbook NX500 design is quite impressive, at least as far as we can see from the press picture.

The rest of the features of the Asus Zenbook NX500 will include titanium-film speakers with SonicMaster as well as ICEpower and Bang & Olufsen technologies which means it will have a decent sound, at least compared to similar notebook.

Unfortunately, Asus did not reveal any details regarding the price or the availability date but we are sure we will hear more about it quite soon.

ASUS has announced a new 15.6-inch gaming laptop which will carry the Republic of Gamers badge and packs some serious power, with an Intel Core i7 mobile Haswell quad-core CPU and Nvidia Maxwell based GPU.

The ASUS Republic of Gamers G550JK gaming laptop features the RoG design with a matte black finish, accented with red details. There's an illuminated ROG logo on the lid and the laptop is 27mm thick, the new G550JK will be available with a choice of two different 15.6-inch panels, an AG IPS LED backlit Full HD 1920x1080 or an AG HD LED backlit 1366x768 resolution panel.

Power beast in 15.6-inch format

As noted, the ASUS ROG G550JK is based on Intel's mobile HM86 chipset and packs Intel Core i7-4700HQ mobile Haswell quad-core CPU, which features Hyper Threading and Intel Turbo Boost 2.0, has 6MB of L3 cache, 47W TDP and works at 2.4GHz base and 3.4GHz Turbo Boost clocks. The CPU can be paried with up to 16GB of DDR3 1600MHz memory.

ASUS also equipped the new ROG G550JK gaming notebook with Nvidia's Geforce GTX 850M Maxwell GPU which will be available with either 2 or 4GB of DDR3 memory depending on the SKU. Although there are quite a few different settings for the GTX 850M, it generally has 640 CUDA cores, works at 876MHz for the GPU and can outperform the Kepler based GTX 765M, despite having fewer CUDA cores. It packs a 128-bit memory interface and can be paired with either 5000MHz clocked GDDR5 memory, or, as in case of the G550JK notebook, DDR3 memory clocked at 2000MHz. It also supports Nvidia Battery Boost, GameStream, ShadowPlay, GPU Boost 2.0, Optimus, PhysX, CUDA, SLI and GeForce Experience.

Feature packed gaming lappie

As far as storage is concerned, the new ASUS ROG G550JK will be available with a couple of different configurations depending on the SKU and pack 2.5-inch SATA 1TB/1.5TB 5400rpm HDD, 2.5-inch 750GB/1TB 7200rpm HDD, single 2.5-inch 750GB SSH 5400rpm HDD or a 2.5-inch 256GB SSD. It also has a couple of ASUS exclusive features including ROG-exclusive ASUS TurboMaster technology with GPU Tweak software which allows the GTX 850M GPU to be overclocked when needed, ASUS SonicMaster Premium, incorporating ICEpower, Bang & Olufsen technology which should give it much better sound and ROG red illuminated chiclet keyboard.

It also comes with all the usual bells and whistles like the 802.11bgn or 802.11 agn WiFi, Bluetooth 4.0, Gigabit Ethernet, three USB 3.0 ports, choice of Blu-ray DVD Combo, Super-Multi DVD or Blue-ray Writer for optical drive, 2-in-1 card reader, HD web camera as well as mini DisplayPort and HDMI otuputs. Unfortunately, battery details are not listed on ASUS' official website but we guess that it will be available with couple of different choices depending on the SKU.

Pricing and availability

Unfortunately, we could not find a single ASUS ROG G550JK SKU listed anywhere in Europe or the USA but hopefully this one will soon show up on retail/e-tail shelves. ASUS' announcement also did not shed any light on the price or the availability date.

We try to keep track of new listings and prices on a regular basis and price search engine Geizhals is usually the place we go to. It features thousands of shops in the DACH region, along with shops from Poland, Holland, UK and a few other European markets.

In addition to new products, it also gives as an idea of what’s hot and what’s not, by displaying the most popular products in each category, either by the number of searches or purchases. The Notebook & Tablets category caught our eye this morning and here’s why:

As you can see none of the top ten products in the search box are proper notebooks. The new Asus Transformer Book Trio tops the list and it has to be said that it is an interesting product. It’s not shipping yet, but many people are looking – and who could blame them? It’s priced at €379 and it features a quad-core Bay Trail chip, 2GB of RAM, 32GB of storage and Windows 8.1 on top. Not bad at all.

Lenovo’s IdeaPad Yoga 2 Pro ranks sixth, but at €1,150+ this impressive convertible probably won’t find too many buyers. The iPad mini ranks eight, while the rest of the list is all Android, Nexus 7, Galaxy Note 10.1 and LG’s new G Pad.

Notebooks just aren’t as hot, people don’t upgrade nearly as often and frankly there’s not much of a reason to upgrade. They just aren’t evolving as quickly and although there’s a number of sleek Ultrabooks out there, they are just too expensive for most mainstream users.

Intel CEO Brian Krzanich has kicked off IDF 2013 and he just showed off the first 14nm Broadwell based notebook. He said that Broadwell based notebooks will ship next year.

The notebook appeared to be working just fine and Krzanich said that by the end of the year Intel plans to ship the first 14nm chips. It helps if you have 60 billion dollars worth of fabs. The notebook looked slim and it looks like Intel is keeping up the tick tock routine. It didn’t went into specifics when it comes next year but it comes next year.

He showed a Windows 8 notebook playing Cut the Rope, meaning that at least one application works on this early version of silicon. Full scale production is definitely kicking off in 2014.

Taking a break from high-quality cases, CPU coolers and gaming peripherals, Cooler Master has launched three new notebook coolers that will be a part of the NotePal series as well as the new CM Storm SF-17 notebook cooler for gaming notebooks.

The Notepal Comforter Air aims at those people that are using cushions or some other stuff to avoid feeling the heat coming from the notebook in their lap, thus causing the notebook to overheat. Compatible with notebooks up to 15.6 inches in size, the Notepal Comforter features a cushion combined with a 100mm fan that should cool the notebook down as well as feel comfortable on your legs.

The Comforter mini is a passive cooling pad for notebooks and tablets which allows notebooks to get decent fresh air to the intake as well as have a groove that allows cable management.

On the other hand, the Notepal XL is a whole different beast. Designed around a 230mm silent fan with blue LEDs, it is compatible with up to 17-inch notebooks, features USB hub with three USB connectors and has a fan speed controller. The Notepal XL will certainly pack enough punch to cope with most gaming notebooks.

Last but not the least, the CM Storm SF-17 is a gaming grade notebook cooler aimed at those that frequent LAN parties. Compatible notebooks up to 19 inches, the CM storm features a powerful 180mm fan, has fan speed controller and four USB connections via USB hub. It also has an abilty to change into four positions thus providing additional ergonomics when using external peripherals, something that is a must on gaming notebooks.

The new Notepal notebook coolers as well as the CM Storm SF-17 should be available pretty soon with a price set at €29.99 for the NotePal Comforter Air, €14.99 for the NotePal Comforter mini €24.99 for the NotePal XL and €49.99 for the CM Storm SF-17.

Eurocom has added the AMD Radeon HD 8970M graphics card to its Ivy Bridge-based Racer 2.0 notebook. According to Eurocom, in addition to the support for MXM 3.0b specification, the new Radeon HD 8970M will offer a new level of ultra-high performance graphics to upgrade their current Racer 2.0 or configure the new system. Eurocom has been known to offer upgradeability for its systems and its nice to know that you can update your GPU in a notebook.

As you probably already know, the GCN architecture based Radeon HD 8970M is simply a higher-clocked version of the Radeon HD 7970M and features 1280 stream processors and works at 850MHz for the GPU and comes with 4GB of GDDR5 memory clocked at 1200MHz and paired up with a 256-bit memory interface.

In case you missed it before, Eurocom's Racer 2.0 is a 15.6-inch Mobile Workstation based on Intel's Mobile H77 Express chipset with support for Intel 22nm Ivy Bridge CPUs, up to 32GB DDR3-1600 memory and up to three HDDs.

Although most of the announcements made at Google's latest event were not a big surprise, the company managed to pull a shiny new rabbit out of its hat by announcing Chromecast, a smart HDMI stick device that runs on a proprietary version of Chrome OS, allows users to stream any content from "basically" any device via WiFi and even control some of the TV functions. Google Chromecast looks like an evolution of the Nexus Q, a short-lived device that never managed to get traction. Chromecast smells like Nexus Q done right.

Chromecast is a 2-inch long device that plugs into your spare HDMI input on the TV and naturally integrates Google's services like Youtube, Play Music, Play Video and Google's Chrome app. It sounds like great device that can even switch your TV on, find the right input source for itself and start playing whatever you decided to put on it via Chromecast button on some other device like the smartphone or tablet. It can even control the volume or skip videos and is capable of switching between devices since it is tied to your Google account.

It can also show your Chrome tabs and put them on the TV screen, browse photos on your Google+ account and do practically anything that you might want, stream from your portable device like a notebook, smartphone or tablet to your TV. The best part of the story is that it works on both Android and iOS and Google will also release the new Google Cast SDK for Android, iOS and Chrome (Windows, Mac OS and Chrome OS) that will allow third-party developers to add features.

Priced at US $35, the Chromecast is available on Google Play in the US for now and should be heading to retail on July 28th. Unfortunately, Google did not shed any light regarding the worldwide availability but hopefully we shouldn't wait too long.

Google again managed to launch an affordable device that practically has no direct competition on the market and we are sure that this little toy will be quite successful. You can check out a neat little video for Chromecast below.

MSI has launched the new GE40 gaming notebook that, according to MSI will offer the perfect combination of ultrabook portability and deadly gaming capability.

Based on Intel's Haswell platform with HM87 chipset and the new Core i7-4702MQ quad-core CPU clocked at 2.9GHz and 3.2GHz Turbo, the GE40 sports Nvidia GTX 760M graphics based on the 28nm GK106 Kepler GPU with 768 CUDA cores paired up with 2GB of GDDR5 memory and 128-bit memory interface. The new MSI GE40 will certainly pack enough punch to handle most games with decent amounts of detail on its 14-inch non-reflective 1600x900 screen.

Currently available in two versions, with 128GB mSATA SSD + 750GB and without optical drive with a price set at US $1.399.99 as well as a version with 750GB HDD only and DVD super multi optical drive for US $1299.99. We are quite sure that more SKUs should follow but it surely sounds like a decent little gaming notebook.